The Suicide Revolution

Posted on 7th October 2016 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Peace, Poetry, Reflections, Stories

Suicide Revolution

by h. Gibrain

 

At my first suiciding

I wanted to show my comrades

that death is a fine art

nothing to be wasted

noting to be scattered in the wind

I set up a white canvas

to catch the Rorschach Pollock

of my body spatter

that life is not static

and my body in motion

when I ignite

in dervish

my skirt splayed open

flowering umbel

my arms alight

my particulate nature

on display

like food wiped from the face

of the privileged obese obtuse

 

that life should be lived

not for love

not in fear

but in the name of art

and in the art of death

when you release that button

the harrowing screams

shattering bones

splattering fluids of babies bodies

the village animals

and a little ahway al araby

mingle in flight

a soup of sorts

simmering in free space

painting your  face

with the food

that was other peoples lives

 

to put on display

the relationship between

love of art

art of life

the living death of stolen moments

razed lands of decimated cultures

once upon a time surviving on

bear invocations of rain igniting crop

crow mythos of the wonkum mikitchia

darkening the horizon

for centuries

cleansing the terrestrial palette

for the next sun child

and the age of Aquarius

dreams of deer

that make all plants flower

all wind blow

give essence to gravity

manipulate tides

and ultimately

determine my scatter plot fantasy

of exploding in the sky

and drizzling the mist of my life

a condiment on your sloven plate

that you could taste the disaster

and wait for god in her serviette chariot

to dab the corners of your face

 

well

there is food in death

and death is art

too many people screaming about injustice

when maybe

we should be eating more of the dead

imbibing the blood drenched tales

of death’s survival in the midst of thriving lives

and how our children can lead

the suicide revolution

where each each city block is a canvas

where the ultimate expression of love and art

unite in blood and body part graffiti grafted

into murals

telling stories

of futile resistance

in the world of

racism writ large

the ultimate liberation comes

not from fighting

but from loving

and letting go

of the skin which keeps apart

 

 

 

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A Thousand Points of Darkness

Posted on 28th February 2016 in Articles

by H. Gibrain

 

King said “But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see … something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today… the cry is always the same — “We want to be free.”

 

Well, as often occurs between opposing forces, oscillations take place much in the same way that the advantage shifts between the two teams in a tug of war until one side eventually overpowers the other through impulse or fatigue. The struggle between the people that want to be free and the prison guards keeping them in the enchanted prison – the struggle for justice and equality between civil societies and their elected-or-not leaders is a bit more complicated than a simple one dimensional tug of war, but ultimately it comes down to strength, endurance, knowing thy opponent and developing a formidable strategy to counter theirs.

 

It has gotten dark, so many stars came out. In fact, borrowing from Bush Jr., the thousand points of light turned out to be so many more than that since, as we dig beneath the structural farce of governments at the federal and state level, mired in corruption, we find communities, tribes and families; as we start to zoom in to local geographies we see so many points of light that we come to realize people like baby Bush, Netanyahu, Hitler, Stalin, Pot were nothing but a thousand points of darkness – like little black holes which, instead of excreting waste, accrue most of what crosses their event horizon.

 

King also talk about the moral arc of the universe being broad but bending toward justice. This is definitely true: we can see the evolution of the principles of human rights and self-determination to be a mostly universally agreed upon (thought hardly enforced when and where it counts) virtue so much so that after thousands of years of human intellectual philosophical, ontological discourse that such principles became enshrined in international law (again, though, hardly enforced when and where it counts).

 

 

Bush’s crafty writers artfully manipulated language to come off as a language of liberation by focusing our attention on the thousand points of local creativity and dialog, that he, somehow was responsible for, while obfuscating the fact that this notion was created from one of the points of darkness, representing all the other points of darkness in our little world since they are all connected and share the same intentions of domination wrought of racism – the typically colonialist mentality genetically engineered through inbreeding to possess a peculiarly strong sense of entitlement: its very root dug deep in an inferiority complex that stems way back to diaper days and a life of poor nutrition tied to violence.

 

King’s crafty writing artfully displays a language of liberation while it acknowledge an organic process of accretion around the central theme of human rights and self-determination. Human rights and self-determination are principles that are transcendent of any aspect of individual or collective identity centered around chauvinism, gender, race, religion and so on such that the words “gender,” “nationality,” “race,” “religion” and so one become unnecessary forms of distinguishing between groups since we all have a common human identity and all require the same basic needs to keep us safe, happy and healthy.

 

Riding along that moral arc of the universe, as we’ve seen – since King’s time – the struggles have changed in their nature and their frequency; if we turn away from those points of relative darkness that cloud that mediasphere, acknowledging that there is a sort of fabricated clash of civilizations taking place, we can acknowledge that, in the 21st century, people are rising up in greater numbers – shifting the balance of powers in the tug of war and forcing a response. We, the people, globally, are taking steps in the right direction (though some of them wrong steps in the right direction) and we must realize that every time we pull a little they will pull back that much harder the next time so with each oscillation in our direction we will need to build strength and endurance and, with resilience and steadfastness, engaging and enlisting people in the struggle for justice forever increasing our numbers to increase our strength. Strength alone will not do it, but there is a critical mass number floating about out there somewhere in the amourospere and we won’t reach it until we find our inspiration in the peoples of the cultures of this world and their ancestral struggles to bring us to this vantage point at which we now stand – witnessing the near infinite points of light beginning to finally overcome the thousand points of darkness who made their promises while they looted our livelihood.

 

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Where have all the flowers gone?

Posted on 30th January 2016 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Notes, Peace, Peace Pedagogy, Practice, Self Determination
By h. Gibrain

Not long ago I was standing in a veritable war zone amid the tear gas, rubber coated bullets and stun grenades looking at the little yellow flowers I was unfamiliar with and thinking about how the western main stream media portrays this particular conflict in the usual fairly unbalanced thought-bytes and the only lives that are ever considered are the human ones: some humans matter more than others but the rest of flora and fauna has, essentially, no representation in the media and apparently doesn’t matter at all.

We all know how important the environment is – ever since the word came to be in use – and, as a culture of refugees, colonialists, conquistadors and anything but the indigenous, we are indoctrinated in a culture of denial and disconnect from nature (the environment outside of your skin) and our minds and the language we think with does not contain the right sequences of words to express or question not only human rights and equality in the eyes of international law and human rights law (if that’s your thing), in the eyes of god (if that’s your thing), through a lens of your indigenous roots on Earth (regardless of where you’re from and all of the defining characteristics of your identity), but we never consider the impact of human conflict on the environment.

Trying to unravel the entangling alliances between state parties is as angrifying as actually understanding the often dubious relationships, based on economic and military power, which reak havoc on innocent people the world over. I’m specifically avoiding examples because there are so many to choose from I don’t want to single out one perpetrator over another and draw a chorus of “what about the others’ “. Besides that’s not my point. My point is that all of that is somewhat irrelevant – the behavior is basically universal in that people are making, selling, buying, and using weapons to kill innocent people and it’s generally not sanctioned by the respective civil societies of the nation-states doing the killing. The underlying issue, which gains absolutely no attention in the press, in social media, from political pundits and the politicians themselves, is the simple set of questions everyone should be asking themselves with their morning coffee, afternoon cocktail, dinner and a joint, is “Who is making all of these weapons? Who is selling all of these weapons? Who is using all of these weapons? And why are they being made, sold, bought, used and not regulated in any consistent fashion, let alone produced at all – when they have only one purpose?”

 

I’m not gonna answer that simple set of questions. I have my own thoughts and beliefs about why this is taking place. The once in a while that I can bear to think about it I just ask myself “why isn’t everyone talking about this and trying to do something about the way these forms of commerce take place?”

Generally, energy flows where attention goes so let us all put some form of attention to this issue. It can be in the form of prayer, mediation, poetry, music, dance, food, letters and phone calls and general lobbying of government officials and weapons manufacturers, letters to editors, peace journalists can participate in focusing their attention on this matter as well. Of course, there are more than one hundred and ninety-eight methods of non-violent armed resistance according to one Gene Sharp (If you’re reading this you know how to use a search engine). I can’t do all 198, but I try a few here and there in a way that doesn’t interfere too much with my white male American middle aged middle classed privilege. I’m asking you do something too. Few are guilty, all are responsible.

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MSMBS Breaking News: Israel puts travel ban on domestic and feral animals: Scorpion detained at border, Falcon shot down.

Posted on 3rd August 2014 in Animal Rights, Articles, MSMBS, Stories

In a latest decision by the Israeli Knesset, legislation was passed forbidding anyone born in the Palestinian Territories from entering Israel until they’re done bombing Gaza. While the new legislation does not explicitly prohibit the travel and migration of other than human animals into Israel’s walled off enclave, there have been numerous reports indicating that this legislation does not explicitly not ban cross border travel for other than human animals. Earlier this morning there was an incident reported at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem in which a Falcon, presumably Palestinian according to the IDF soldier, attempted to fly across the border into Israel.

“While there is no real way of telling if this is a Palestinian Falcon or an Israeli Falcon, we can’t take the risk. It is worth it to sacrifice one of our own for the sake of preventing… well, I’m not really sure but who cares. If it’s Palestinian, it has no right to be in Israel.”

At another less frequented checkpoint where most of the traffic are settlers going in and out of the illegal settlements in and out of Israel proper, a scorpion was detained, questioned and released back in the direction West Bank as it was attempting to cross the checkpoint. The same scorpion, it was presumed, later attempted to cross again and this time was shot by an IDF soldier.

“We will have none of this. This person was detained, questioned and sent back. At the second attempt to cross the border it was immediately considered a security threat and neutralized,” said the IDF soldier who asked to remain anonymous.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed a grave concern for such measures indicating a greater isolation for Israel among the member states to the UN Charter.

“While such measures do indicate that Israel is ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to extending the right of legal personhood to non-human species, we are concerned since these measures seem to be used only as a means to further isolate and discriminate against the indigenous population. However, seeing as we are the UN, based on our current structure we are powerless to do anything against this decision and until the UN has a second charter convention and gets rid of the security council you can expect that Israel will continue to act with impunity… oh, and so will the US, Russia, China, France, the UK and so on.”

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Towards A Vegan Essene State

Posted on 31st July 2014 in Animal Rights, Articles, Self Determination

Vegans, for as long as the word existed, have been persecuted around the world. You know, you’ve done it yourself. We’re tired of having wieners waved in our faces, we’re tired of stupid questions like “where do you get your protein?” and “so you don’t eat chicken” as if chicken were a vegetable, fungi, prokaryote or other colonial organism. We’re fed up – so to speak.

Further, we want to live in a state where no animals are cruelly treated: used in factory farming or raised as commodities for human benefit; used in testing for the safety of human ego glamor products; used to test farmaceuticals to cure the ills that humans bring upon themselves from poor attitudes, bad diet and a disconnect from the very land which gives them life.

Vegans deserve a place where they don’t have to put up with inflated vegetable prices resulting from farm subsidies to the animal slaughter industry. Vegans don’t want to smell the burning carnage billowing out of restaurants as they walk down the streets of their communities. Vegans don’t want to have to breath in the dead skin cells of the omnivorous counterparts and would like to bring that cell count to a minimum.

For our homeland we propose that we create a state within a state within a state – we can be given land in Israel – perhaps the Golan Heights, southern Lebanon, Jerusalem or maybe somewhere in the Negev since they were going to take that place form the Bedouins recently.

We choose this place because we, as vegan Essenes, follow the same beliefs that Jesus did – according to the dead sea scrolls Jesus was an Essene and therefore a vegan. Since Jesus was a Jew, since an entire religion created in his name, and since that is where the 3 or so major religions claim as there homeland, we feel we should have a homeland too.

We hope the state of Israel, created as a homeland for an oppressed, persecuted and dispossessed peoples, will understand our plight and will give us a piece of the land that was given to them by the former empires of the world on a land where other people were living. They should be able to relate to that and empathize with us.

We will soon be petitioning the UN for the right to legal veganhood and seeking funding through the Vegan Defense Fund. We shall soon be publishing a complete manifesto of how we shall go about funding this large scale emigration, assimilation into the existent community and security concerns.

 

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Breaking In/Out to/of Israel

Posted on 20th March 2014 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Reflections, Self Determination

Israel, a w(W)hite W(w)estern Jewish democracy (Orwellian Newspeak), is not always that easy to get into. You have to be crafty to break into such a fortress (aka Enchanted Prison). Those amongst we holy wanderers, political dissidents and ignorant travelers have different types of preparation to perpetrate. Some just have to pack their clothes and get on and off of a plane or two. Others have to clean up their facebook accounts, look tired, and prepare names and phone numbers of friends or friends of friends or acquaintances of friends and/or family and their friends and/or associates who might lend a phone number and rough location along with a corroborative report. Others, I’m certain, spend a little extra money on the latest grunge fads to like they are already a part of the Tel Aviv hipster crowd.

 

When you arrive, your boyfriend may not be allowed to enter. He will call you when he is at the gate departing with the news that he is being sent back and he is not exactly sure why and neither were the Israeli’s who are making him go back. You might get asked a series of questions pertaining to your travel intentions, who you’re staying with, and how long you’ll be there. You might have to provide a phone number and an address or two and watch as they call the number to make sure your story holds water. If you are a known activist or know any known activists you might likely be taken to another room and undergo an interrogation. You may be asked to strip. You may be asked to open your computer and login to your accounts so they can see what you’ve been up to. You might get a stamp on your passport indicating you are not welcome back to Israel for a decade – presumably when the social and political order is a bit more chill.

 

Whether you are entering or leaving, if you are actually acting with dubious intentions (maybe you’re an intellectual studying Palestinian Art as a form of resistance, or your teaching Pal children to build skateboard parks and learn how to skate, or your a young German girl working for the UN in Ramallah), you’ve gotta do a minimum of two things to enter safely: you have to have a viable story worked out and you’ve got to de-arabize or de-palestinianize your travel articles. Maybe you won’t abring Said’s book on the Question of Palestine or the book on Dabka but would rather grab yourself a copy of Hertzl’s Jewish State and pretend your coming to visit the holy sites and explore your Jewish or Christian roots. Maybe your contemplating Aliyah to get some of your tax dollars back. You’ll learn a couple of Hebrew words to pretend your on in being in on the know. Most of all, deep down inside, you’re prepared to be carted and cordoned off, questioned, cross examined, caressed, and sent back across the Mediterranean lest you be suspected of seeking a dialogue with like minded humanists (Allah forbid they be Arabs), learning a little bit about the cultures of both sides: the indigenous Arab populations and the mostly white implants (read colonizers) in Israel proper. [Note: everyone should have the right to a decent and safe place to live but the history of colonization implies dispossessing others of their homes and land and that tends to piss people off and cause protracted conflicts – something Hertzl was well aware of and wrote about].

 

Then, of course, there is a sort of un-re-decolonizing of the mind/heart/spirit triad that has to take place. It goes something like this: you realize that your spending so much time coming up with stories so that you can continue to enter and exit Israel. You realize that realizing how much time and energy realizing it takes up more time and energy. You realize that it is this way intentionally. You realize that for a brief period of time you are Israel’s bitch because they’re forcing you to make unethical decisions – you feel boxed into lying. You invent the term “flying ethics” (once again, to mock the flying checkpoints that Palestinians are subject to): literally ethics on the fly, a tactic used to avoid telling incriminating truths in the face of arbitrary and unreasonable searches and seizures such as: I was in Hebron, I visited the Darwish Museum, I purchased olive soap and sweets in Nablus, I ate felafel in Birzeit, there is a really beautiful human being that I’ve fallen in love with that lives in East jerusalem, and/or I am an ardent supporter and promoter of human rights and I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

 

You realize its fuck all that you’re forced into this shituation to begin with and you can’t just smile and be honest and travel freely to visit a beautiful peoples in a beautiful culture in a not too beautiful circumstance. You realize that if you make it in or out you might not make it in or out again. You realize that this cycle is precisely what your being forced into again and you argue the virtues of honesty versus the virtues of lying knowing full well that they’re just toying with you and they know where you’ve been in any case and since they can’t really do to you what they do to the Palestinians at least they can have some fun with you, own your ass, watch you sweat, catalog the inventions that you’ve come up with, and determine whether or not you should be made an example of.

 

They know you’ve spent countless hours with your friends telling stories of what happened to them or people they know. They know you’ve been busy coming up with stories of your own. They know it doesn’t matter what you say, where you’re from or your station in life. If they want to fuck with you, in many splendid ways, they will. So, for just a little amount of time you are their bitch.

 

You can imagine the kind of intellectual tai chi chuan that is required to skate flawlessly through the system of checkpoints, questions and border crossings. It is, in many ways, however, like roulette. The outcome is seemingly random.

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